Locarno Festival 2007: Leopard for the Best First Feature - Filmmakers of the Present Competition

Nadia, Paola and Massimo, all survivors of a serious road accident, get to know one another at the hospital. They had never met before getting caught in the pile-up. As they are about to go home, and return to their regular lives, the three convalescents find it difficult to part: feeling themselves henceforth linked by a deep and mysterious bond. They see one another to exchange their impressions of the tragic experience, keeping their meetings secret from their family and friends. One afternoon, they come across some videos of body art performances in which the participants mutilate their bodies for the beauty of the action. Although Paola and Massimo are initially hesitant, Nadia, less inhibited, and who has an enormous scar on her back that disfigures her perfect shape, sees these practices as a way of accessing the pain of which she was deprived when the accident happened. In fact, even though they were all severely injured, because they were unconscious for a long time, none of them remembers, nor felt, any pain. Led by Nadia, the three protagonists start using bits of glass to cut themselves on the arm and body, believing they have found a way to regain control of their bodies but also a way to rediscover sexual desire. Tagliare le parti un grigio, charts the descent of the characters into a kind of Hell via moments of tension, break-ups and reconciliations. Using high-contrast cinematography and saturated colours, Vittorio Rifranti aestheticises damaged bodies and places physical sensation at the heart of the film, as if moral suffering required incarnation in the flesh to assume its full dimension. Like Massimo, who thinks he will understand the victims of the Bosnian war through the physical pain he inflicts on himself.